What do we want ? Gradual Change. When do we want it ? In due course

This morning I read yet another comment from a member of the British cycle campaigning establishment which said "It’s taken the Netherlands 40 years to get from where they were in the 70s to what you see there now". This excuse is used often in Britain seemingly as a reason why British campaigners should be happy with less than the Dutch have.

New Scientist magazine in 1981. Just
eight years after Stop De Kindermoord,
the Dutch were already ahead and
considered to be worth emulating

But how true is it that the Dutch are "Forty years ahead", and how much sense does it make for campaigners who are supposed to be calling for change to repeat this message. Should cyclists really expect no more than some minor variation of what they already have ? It's an example of defeatism. Campaigners should surely be looking to close the claimed 40 year gap and not making excuses for the country being so far behind.

Still from a video produced in 1990
about the Dutch Bicycle Masterplan
of 1989. In several languages, it was
intended to help planners and
campaigners elsewhere. Emphasis
on children.

It didn't really take 40 years in the Netherlands
It is true that the Stop de Kindermoord protests occurred forty years ago, but it is not true that it took forty years for the Netherlands to achieve a standard of infrastructure vastly ahead of what Britain has now.

In fact, in 1981, just eight years after those protests, an article appeared in New Scientist praising what had been achieved and suggesting that the UK should copy.

After another 9 years, just seventeen years in total after the Dutch "Stop child murder" protests, cycling infrastructure and policy in the Netherlands were of sufficient quality that it was worth making a film about it. There are several stills from the film in this post. Follow the link to view the film yourself.

A mother cycling with very young
children 23 years ago. These small
children are now adult.

Useful change was achieved in the Netherlands within the time it took for a toddler to grow up into a teenager. Children for whom campaigning took place in the 1970s actually got to experience the results for themselves before they were adults.

Why so little progress in the UK ?
So what has happened and continues to happen in the UK ? Has the UK really had less time in which to achieve results, or is just that no real effort has been expended in cycling ? Why has progress been so slow that it can't be measured at all ? Where were the campaigners during all this time ? Have they not had time to respond to the lack of progress ?

Dutch School Children with the freedom
to cycle to school 23 years ago. They've
grown up and their children now cycle
to school. British children just got
training. Their children got yet more
training. It still hasn't resulted in
scenes like this.

I noted a few blog posts ago that the Cambridge Cycling Campaign was established seventeen years ago. The organisation has been in existence for the same amount of time as it took for the Netherlands to change an entire country's streets to the point where the Bicycle Masterplan video first show-cased the quality of Dutch cycling facilities to the world.

But the Cambridge Cycling Campaign is actually a relative newcomer to campaigning. London Cycling Campaign was founded in 1978. 35 years has passed since they began their campaign for London's cyclists.

Parents of those Dutch children cycled
to work. Many are now grandparents
who still cycle. Generations of Dutch
people have benefited.

Sustrans was founded a year earlier than LCC so they've had 36 years in which to ferment change right across the country, like the LCC, they've existed for twice as long as it took to transform the Netherlands.

This post was prompted by the text quoted in the first paragraph, written by someone who often speaks out on behalf of CTC. It's a common claim in the UK, and I'm not rounding on this individual, but CTC itself should know better. In cycling terms, CTC is an incredibly ancient organisation. Founded in 1878, they're one of the very oldest cycling organisations on the planet and have had a whopping 135 years in which to campaign for cyclists. That's eight times as long as it took to transform the Netherlands. Unlike the newer organisations, CTC has been there fighting for cyclists, for the entire post-second-world-war period over which cycling has declined.

Time is clearly not the issue. There has been plenty of time for Britain to have achieved all that the Dutch have, and more. Many people have worked very hard for cycling, they've given much of their time over many years, yet progress has not been made. Why ?

New housing developments in the
Netherlands were already designed
around the bike 23 years ago. When
will Britain make a start ?

So what went wrong ?
Campaigners in Britain seem to suffer from several problems. They have shown themselves to have low aspirations, not daring to ask for the proven success of the Netherlands to be replicated but instead trying to find some alternative route to mass cycling.

I've noted before that the Cambridge Cycling Campaign does not hold the council to high enough standards. Other local groups have done likewise. LCC asks for second rate infrastructure in London. Sustrans has shown themselves to put their name on routes which are simply not of a quality that one can cycle on them. These are just three organisations of many who have been willing to ask for or rubber-stamp infrastructure which is nowhere near the standard required.

Quote from 23 years ago: "Making cycling
safer, for example by separating bicycle
traffic from car traffic". When will this
be official policy in the UK ?

The other fundamental problem has been the dogged adherence of "cyclists" in Britain to the ideology of riding on the road. This has led to CTC standing firmly in the way of Britain building the infrastructure which is required to grow cycling, while an increasing majority of the population see cycling as something alien to them.

There remains great pent-up demand for cycling. People gather at events at which they can cycle in safety. However outside of those events the public image of cycling in Britain is largely of an extreme sport that only "cyclists" take part in. Cyclists are viewed as being militant and angry outsiders. In part this is a result of cycle campaigning which has focused only on the needs of "cyclists" and therefore excluded other people from taking part.

Targets for 2010 in the video from 1990
These targets were (pretty much) met

It's not good enough to say that conditions are good enough for everyone to cycle just because you, as a self-selected member of the small percentage of people who cycle find conditions to be good enough now, already cycle. Other people won't do it until it feels safe for them. An emphasis on training cyclists while still asking for infrastructure which suits only those who already cycle has helped the decline of cycling because it does nothing to address the most common reason why the majority do not cycle.

What do we want ? Gradual change. When do we want it ? In due course !
Think what you really want to ask for. If you want cycling to grow from 1% of journeys to 27% of journeys and for cycling to be normal for everyone then it must be inclusive of everyone.

Dutch railways stations already had
enormous bicycle parks (though they
had to grow to keep up with demand)

Cycling should not be just about "cyclists". Cycling is beneficial for all of society. Children should be able to go to school unaccompanied. Parents should be freed from the school run. All adults who currently feel that they have no alternative but to drive and who find it expensive and stressful, should be able to choose to cycle.  Elderly people and those with disabilities should also be able to experience the freedom of cycling. Society suffers from all the well known adverse effects of excess driving, such as rat-running, road rage, obesity, air and noise pollution and the violent deaths of thousands of people every year.

This is why cycle campaigning needs to grow to be inclusive and not be focused on a tiny minority.

There is really only one place worth looking to in order to find the answers, and that is the one place where these things are already true: The Netherlands. Don't dilute demands by asking for what is unproven or by following examples from elsewhere which have achieved less. Ignore anything which was tried and abandoned in the Netherlands because there is no need to copy mistakes from here or elsewhere.

Does this look like the result of
successful policy in the UK ?

The future is what you make it. Demand nothing less than best practice loudly enough, repeat it often enough, and make sure that the full benefits for everyone are known and something just might happen. While a multitude of cycling organisations all of which have multiple ideas about what they want, which between them give a mixed and difficult to understand message and which will often offer government an easy and cheap way out, progress is nearly impossible.

There is nothing magical about what happened in the Netherlands forty years ago. This country simply decided on sensible policies which were good for society and it has stuck with them ever since.

The claim has not always been "40 years"
I can remember when campaigners and officials in the UK claimed that the Netherlands was 20, 25, 30 and 35 years ahead. It's the same claim, but it is periodically for the ever longer period of time while no progress is made in Britain.

What does this mean precisely ? It makes no sense whatsoever to justify a a further delay in making cycling accessible to everyone in Britain just because, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years have already been wasted. Fifty years ? Well, if we don't start to jump on people who make this statement, as well as those who use the other excuses for inaction, we're still going to be hearing the same sad refrain in another ten years time.

Andrew Gilligan, London's Cycling Commissioner
The first comment below this blog post, written just a couple of minutes after it went public, pointed out that Andrew Gilligan, London's "Cycling Czar", said two days ago that "it took 40 years to turn even Amsterdam into Amsterdam" in a post which is a teaser for their "vision" which will be launched tomorrow. This is no more true for London vs. Amsterdam than Britain vs. the Netherlands as a whole. Everything above applies. Come on London, you need to aim much higher than you have before,

If you want to see for yourself how the infrastructure and policy have combined to get everyone to ride bikes in the Netherlands, there's a study tour in May on which we demonstrate almost everything featured in the many posts on this blog in just three days.

The chant in the title is Kate Fox's idea of what "a truly English protest march" would sound like. It comes from her book "Watching the English". I find it interesting that the 38 page long "Rules of the Road" section of her book goes to much effort to explain how wonderful British drivers are but doesn't actually mention cycling at all, even though it says in the introduction on the first page of this section that it will discuss cycling. That this mode of transport is practically invisible even to an anthropologist studying the English says something about how commonly people cycle in that country.

The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain can rest easy for now. They've only been going for about two years and that's only a quarter of the time that it took for the Netherlands to get to the point that journalists from New Scientist were impressed. But has a quarter of that progress been made in Great Britain in the last two years ?